Reporter Writes of Children and Crime in Russia

Reporter Writes of Children and Crime in Russia

Article excerpt

Yuri Shchekochikhin wears two hats, one as journalist, the
other as president of a foundation dedicated to supporting the
Russian intelligentsia.

It was as president of the International Foundation of Young
Intellectuals that he was in St. Louis Monday to discuss plans with
Webster University to publish in English a book declaring the human
rights that Russian children should have, like the right to
education and housing and even to parents.

"You can see children hanging out at the railroad stations -
they have no place to go," Shchekochikhin said through a translator.

It is as a muckraker on Russian crime that Shchekochikhin is
working on a separate project to track children spirited from
Russia into this country, he said, as virtual slave labor. "It's
one of the new aspects of the human-rights issue," he said.

He said, "There is a tremendous process of criminalization
going on in Russia. It changes values and attitudes. That is why it
is important for us to support young intellectuals who don't want
to be subject to new rules imposed" by organized crime. …